Experience Covenant

Covenant Students Speak at Howard School

Build Me a World, a documentary produced by Drew Belz ’10 and Isaiah Smallman ’11 and directed by Bethany Mollenkof ’10, has inspired a group of Covenant students and staff to take action.

The film follows the lives of several teens at Howard School, a struggling public school at the foot of Lookout Mountain. At a Q&A after a screening of the film on campus, Howard students and their principal Paul Smith invited Covenant students to visit, and Meredith Hall ’09, resident director of Maclellan/Rymer Hall, took them up on the invitation. She and Bryce Stout ’14 went to Howard for a tour, and were invited back again.

“We came to visit them at school and to just be learners,” she says. Later, on October 1, several resident assistants, along with Meredith and Justin Jose, the assistant resident director of Maclellan/Rymer, went to Howard, where they served as panelists, discussing college choices in a leadership class. “The beautiful thing was that they had a lot of potential, and they wanted their potential to be developed,” says Abbie Rice ’13.

“I think the Howard students benefited from our panel, and I also think my staff, including myself, benefited from knowing about Howard School and those students and being exposed directly to that community,” says Meredith. “Now that there is a precedent set, I hope it will be easier for future groups of Covenant students to feel comfortable initiating involvement with students at Howard, and I hope that the Howard School sees Covenant as a part of their local community that is willing to be involved with them.”

The mission of Covenant College is to explore and express the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things. We offer the world biblically grounded men and women equipped to live out extraordinary callings in ordinary places.